Tina and Bartel, the Ghana DRL field team, have spent a week at the Ebola Coordination Hub in Accra.

The Ghana DRL field team in Accra (left: at UNMEER Headquarters with UNMEER Chief IM Jeffrey Villaveces; right with Nethope's Gisli Olafsson)

They had the opportunity to discuss with people working in the UNMEER (United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response) regional Head Quarters. ﻿UNMEER﻿ has been created for the purpose of fighting Ebola in September 2014. Under the umbrella of UNMEER several UN agencies work together to fight Ebola such as WHO, WFP and UNICEF. Other players are not involved in UNMEER, most notably OCHA, the office for coordination of humanitarian affairs. In several discussions, we have been exploring the emerging coordination structures between the UNMEER HQ and the field.

The team also visited the UNHRD warehouse, and interviewed people from WFP as well as humanitarian NGOs like NetHope, MapAction, and the Germany Support Team that is reinforcing the logistic operations.

In the back office, Laura Laguna has been working on identification of contacts and helping with arrangement for interviews with responders who would like to support our work by sharing their experience in the field, including NGOs and other organizations. Laura has also run some spot analyses on the first interviews and provided feedback to the field team.

Some impressions from an initial analysis confirm that coordination of the response under UNMEER is highly complex, as people from different organizations with their respective working cultures; processes and procedures must now work together. Getting reliable data from the field is still difficult, and many efforts are undertaken currently to improve Information Management. In the coming weeks, 60 new Information Management Officers will be sent to the field and cover all districts in the three affected countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

Despite these challenges, the team is impressed by everyone’s dedication and commitment to fight Ebola.